Central Church Port Kembla Central Church Port Kembla

The art of lamenting is not often practiced by the modern day Christian. Yet, it is a sacred, age old form of spiritual practice, possibly the most raw and honest way we come to God. In this message, Oran looks at the godly nature of lament and using Psalm 10 as an example, walks through the four movements of the lament psalm.

More than any other book in the Bible, the Psalms teach us how to be human. They reveal to us that our humanity is not a flaw, but the very means by which we encounter God. Using Psalm 25, Caro invites us to consider how we might carry the unfinishedness of our lives in a way that helps us to remain open to God's grace.

Becca introduces us to Walter Brueggemann's pattern of the life of faith. We are always moving in different ways (and perhaps even in different parts of our life) from:

* secure orientation - where life makes sense, all seems well, we're in a state of equilibrium; to

* painful disorientation - where life is chaotic, disordered, things don't make sense, we're swept off our feet by something unexpected (or unjust) and we feel disoriented; through to

* surprising reorientation - where things begin to feel 'new' again, not a return to what was, but a movement towards surprising grace, risky hope, unexpected regrounding. We are rarely in control of when or how this reorientation comes.

The Psalms as a whole book contain the full spectrum of human experience and emotions, and even within any given Psalm we can see the movement from secure orientation to painful disorientation or painful disorientation to surprising reorientation.
The Psalms give us permission to be ourselves, exactly as we are, raw, honest and unfiltered before God.

The Psalms remind us that God does not want a curated 'nice' relationship with us, but can handle our grief, rage, despair, fear, longing, lostness and exhaustion.

Becca hosts Laura, Bekk and Kim as they share their thoughts and experiences with the motherheart of God. They share ways in which seeing God as mother has been healing, and also the ways they see God as beyond gender. This is a really authentic and honest discussion and highlights the ways each of us have an individual and unique relationship with the Divine.

The Myth of Redemptive was a term popularised by Theologian Walter Wink in 1945, in his book The Powers That Be. It is the idea that war brings peace, might makes right, and out of violence and chaos comes peace and order. We see this myth at work all throughout human history and still today in our everyday lives. We think that if we, the good guys, can just hit the "bad guys" hard enough, there will be justice. But this only perpetuates the violence, not stops it. In scripture we see Jesus' whole ministry as a push back against the Myth of Redemptive and instead shows us redemptive suffering on the cross. In this podcast, Oran looks at this myth and how it has influenced us over history, including scripture and theology.

How does Jesus' post-resurrection encounter with two people who don't recognise him speak to our own experiences of loss and grief?